The PLO, to which the Palestinian Authority is subservient, has escalated its campaign to remove all connection between Judaism and the site of the destroyed Holy Temples by appealing to international media to stop using the ”inaccurate term Temple Mount.”

“The Al-Aqsa Mosque compound is not a disputed territory and all other terms, therefore, are null and void,” according to a PLO statement published by the official Palestinian Authority WAFA news agency.

It claimed that the Al Aqsa mosque has been under exclusive Muslim sovereignty and control since the construction of the Dome of the Rock in 692 CE, which is a blatant lie.

During the period of the Crusaders conquest, the site was turned over to the Augustinians, who turned it into a church while the Al-Aqsa Mosque became a royal palace. The mosque building became the headquarters of The Knights Templar during the 12th century

Israel raised its national flag over the Temple Mount after the Six-Day War in 1967, but Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered that it be taken down, and he authorized the Muslim Waqf to supervise the site. Jews freely ascended the Temple Mount without any objection for several years after 1967.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel, run by Haredim, unwittingly aided and abetted the Muslim campaign to exclude Jews by ruling that Jews are forbidden from ascending the Temple Mount because they might walk over the buried ruins of the Holy Temples. An increasing number of national religious rabbis have permitted and even encouraged vesting areas of the Temple Mount where they say there is no such concern.

WAFA described the entire 36-acre site of the Al Aqsa mosque compound as a Muslim holy site.

The Palestinian Authority over the past decade has tried to eliminate any proof that the Holy Temples existed by removing hundreds of tons of debris that contained artifacts of the Temple period.

WAFA stated for media consumption that the Al Aqsa c=mosque compound is “sacred to approximately 1.6 billion Muslims around the world and [is] a symbol for all Palestinians.”

It added that the compound ”is located in East Jerusalem, an internationally recognized part of the Occupied State of Palestine” and alleged that “since Israel’s military occupation of East Jerusalem in the June 1967 War, several plots by settler organizations and other Zionist extremists to blow up the Mosque were uncovered by the Israeli authorities.”

The PLO strategy is to cash in on the Chamberlain-like appeasement preaching that “settler leaders, with the support of the Israeli government, continue to incite against this sacred site, and consequently provoke Palestinian fears and anger.”

According to the theory, Israel should not do anything that angers the Muslims.

It is no wonder that Iran still frees free to propose peace in the Middle East by annihilating Israel.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei tweeted, “Khamenei.ir ‏@khamenei_ir This barbaric, wolflike & infanticidal regime of #Israel which spares no crime has no cure but to be annihilated. 7/23/14 #HandsOffAlAqsa”.

Police arrested an Arab from entering the Temple Mount, and an enraged Grand Mufti and other Arabs began throwing plastic chairs at five Jews who entered the Temple Mount under police escort. Arab media said they prostrated themselves, an act of prayer that the Waqf prohibits, except for Muslims.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told The Washington Post the group did not carry out any act of prayer. As usual, Palestinian Authority media exaggerated the entire scene. Arab media always report that Jews “stormed” the Temple Mount. The Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency reported that 50, and not five, Jews prostrated themselves.

Israeli police stepped in to end the clash before it could get out of hand and arrested the Mufti, a rare action.

It did not take much time for Jordan to hear of the altercation, and the country’s parliament unanimously agreed that the kingdom should expel the Israeli ambassador and recall its own ambassador from Tel Aviv. The parliament added its own imagination to the facts and claimed that Israel is trying to build a bridge between the Al Aqsa mosque and Jerusalem “settlements.” The parliament also called for drafting legislation to scrap the peace treaty with Israel.

Several hours later, Israel released the Mufti, which probably was not related to the Jordanian parliament’s move. The government knows full well that the Arab world will not sit passive with the Jerusalem Mufti being taken from his home for interrogation.

The U.S. State Department was asked by reporters to comment on the fuss, and assistant spokesman Patrick Ventrell told them, “We urge all sides to respect the status quo of this holy site and to exercise restraint and refrain from provocative actions.

As usual, the State Dept. does not what it is talking about.

Status quo? From when? From 1967?

The Israeli government passed the Protection of Holy Places Law on June 27, 1967.

It states:

“The Holy Places shall be protected from desecration and any other violation and from anything likely to violate the freedom of access of the members of the different religions to the places sacred to them or their feelings with regard to those places.”

The wise State Dept. does not also know much about the Mufti, Muhammad Ahmad Hussein.

In 2006, he stated that suicide bombings of Israelis were “legitimate, of course, as long as it plays a role in the resistance.”

On the other hand, one could say he simply was maintaining the status quo, which the Oslo Accords and the peace treaty with Jordan changed.

Jordan controlled the Temple Mount until the Six-Day War in 1967. Before then, Amman did not let Jews visit holy sites in the Old City of Jerusalem. It also prohibited Christians from most churches and holy sites in the Old City, Judea and Samaria, except for few and far between visiting foreign dignitaries.

After Jerusalem was restored to Israel in 1967, the Israeli government didn’t want to have much to do with the Temple Mount for many reasons, not the least of which was the concern of a religious war with Muslims as well as the complicated and complex issue in Jewish law of whether it is even permitted for a Jew to ascend to the site of the destroyed First and Second Temples.

The government left authority for the Temple Mount site in the hands of the Muslim Waqf site, with the stipulation that Israeli police could patrol the site and enter the mosque area, if necessary.

The “status quo” ended in 1969, when an Australian evangelical Christian tried to burn down the mosque to hasten the Second Coming, if not World War III.

Muslims began to renovate buildings on the Temple Mount and tried to minimize the presence of Israel soldiers. A plot by a Jewish underground movement to blow up he Al Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock to awaken Jews to a spiritual revival, or alternatively, bring on World War III.

MKs Stav Shafir (Labor), Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) and Michal Rozin (Meretz) participated Tuesday morning in the Rosh Chodesh prayer of Women of the Wall. All three, like the rest of the 300 women present, donned prayer shawls, in violation of a 2003 Supreme Court’s ruling.

This time, however, due to the presence of three legislators, police refrained from arresting anyone. The group noted that this was the first time in 22 months in which none of them ended up in jail.

The Kotel Police did try at first to prevent MK Shafir from entering the plaza, but she insisted on her right to participate in prayer and on wearing a prayer shawl.

This incident was very similar to the attempt, one week ago, of MK Moshe Feiglin to enter the Dome of the Rock, armed with his own MK papers.

Perhaps it is high time that the two groups, the Temple Mount Loyalists and the Women of the Wall combine their efforts…

After the prayer service, MK Shafir said: “They tried to prevent us from entering the Western Wall plaza, claiming we are disturbing the public order, but there is nothing that 100 women armed with tallitot can’t do. Surrounded by male and female police, against the shouting and shofar blowing of Haredi men across the fence – we stood in front of the Kotel and said our prayer.”

If a future prime minister would be looking for a new Minister of Religious Services, perhaps MK Shafir, leader of the social protests of the summer of 2011, would find her true calling there.

“I normally do not wear a tallit, but I feel a duty and a great privilege to stand here and make sure that every Jew in the world can pray as they wish,” MK Shafir stated. “I cannot be that one faction of Judaism take possession of a place which is sacred to all the Jew of the world. While there are genuine disagreements between the different streams of Judaism over the correct way to worship God, we must remember that there’s more uniting than dividing us, and the least we can do is let everyone, male and female, pray to God as they best understand.”

Women of the Wall Chair Anat Hoffman said, with more than a little melodramatic flair: “Today we took one more step in our struggle to liberate the Kotel. Thanks to the members of Knesset, we prayed today with tallit and tefillin, an act which for the last 22 months has carried with it the threat of arrest. We must keep up the pressure to end the oppression of women at the Kotel, to see a day soon when we read Torah in peace at the Kotel.”

Shira Pruce, the organization’s director of public relations, was a bit more prosaic in describing the day’s event, although she, too, sounded elated. Speaking to the Jewish Press, Pruce insisted that the Women of the Wall’s end goal is not to create a new Jewish movement, or promote any particular stream of Judaism.

“There were a lot more Israeli Orthodox women than usual,” she said, referring to the attendance at the Rosh Chodesh ceremony. “Maybe up to 30 percent. I was really surprised. I think in the last few months we’ve started attracting Modern Orthodox women.”

The majority of women, though, were Conservative and Reform.

There were more than the usual number of Haredi women on hand this time, whom, Spruce thought, were there in response to the group’s presence.

“They were screaming and yelling and insulting,” she described, suggesting “there was no doubt” that they came just to disturb the group’s prayer.

On Monday, Women of the Wall announced its concern after Haredi Jerusalem had been plastered with “pashkevilim” calling on Haredim to come in droves to protest the Kotel prayers. But, according to Pruce, “the pashkevilim did not have the desired effect. Maybe we don’t bother the average Haredi person as much as one might think or the government might fear.”